#TURN BACK TIME THE FAMILY PROFESSIONAL#

I religiously followed вЂњTop 20,вЂќ a radio show based in England, and meticulously took notes on the ranking of the songs and the bands. Diamandis with Canadian tennis player Eugenie BouchardД«ut even before I came across tennis, as a 15-year-old from Cyprus (a former British colony), I began discovering in 1967 the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the other rock groups by listening to English radio stations. Yet each of the two properties I own includes a tennis court, both built before the houses were erected! (Important things first.) Aside from my backhand weakness, I know the game very well.

#TURN BACK TIME THE FAMILY PROFESSIONAL#

To my disappointment, my children never really showed any interest in playing professional tennis (they play for recreation) and I was never really good at the sport either. When my children were born, I so desperately wanted them to become Wimbledon champions that I even wrote a fiction piece on this subject (1). I would try to hit tennis balls anywhere, including walls, inside my apartment or even in the lab where I worked! I followed all the international tournaments and scores in newspapers (no internet then) and fell in love with the champions of the time, such as Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. If the strings of my racket broke, I would mend them myself, since I had no money to replace them. The balls we were using were beaten to death and barely bounced. As the tennis courts were in high demand, we usually had to wait two or three hours to play for 30 minutes, as court booking was not a thing in Greece during that time. It so happened that near my apartment in Athens there were two university tennis courts where I could play tennis for free. and bought a cheap wooden racket from K-Mart before returning to Greece. I was introduced to the sport in the early 1980s when I traveled for the first time to the U.S. From very early on, I showed a keen interest in many sports, including soccer, boxing, basketball, athletics and so on, but it wasnвЂ™t until my medical-school years that I fell in love with tennis. I suspect that these natural and spontaneous tendencies could have been used to build an alternate career. Over the years, I have been devoting time and energy in areas outside my profession. However, we are all born with other passions that we do not necessarily explore when building a professional career. With all this in mind, I have no complaints. It is a very rewarding and well-paid profession. At the same time, we have the privilege of working with brilliant young people whom we coach to develop their own paths to success.

The beauty of our profession is that we have the freedom to investigate unanswered questions of our choice and be at the forefront of curiosity-driven research. I published often, made some discoveries, mentored more than 60 graduate students and collaborated with an army of other scientists during the course of my career. I believe that I have had a successful career in science and academia. The third one, who enjoys athletics, revealed that he would have pursued professional golf. The second emphatically declared that he was completely satisfied with his current career and would follow the exact same path if he were to start over. I asked each of them of what alternative career they would pursue if given a second chance. The rock icon Cher sang her hit of the 1980s вЂњIf I Could Turn Back Time.вЂќ However, we all know that nobody can do this, and the Nobel laureate Bob Dylan confirmed it with his song вЂњThe Times They Are A-Changin.вЂќ The poster for DiamandisвЂ™ laboratory band PHOTOS COURTESY OF ELEFTHERIOS DIAMANDISДЄt the 2016 Annual Conference of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, I attended a session honoring three very successful clinical chemists.

Turn back time the family